One needs to appreciate this to understand what's happening with taxi drivers at the moment and to see where the industry is going.

Wednesday's protest in the city streets of Melbourne is something the WASs and G&Is would never do, and it is why, in the 24 years that I have been driving, we of the first two groups, have allowed the privileged few who own the licences to have their way, while we as drivers, have accomplished nothing.

In the space of a few hours of passionate determination, the NKOB in the industry brought the city to a standstill.

They displayed their naked bodies across every newspaper and television channel in the country, had Minister for Transport, Lynne Kosky, jumping to attention in record time, and lo and behold, gained concessions that the rest of us were not even asking for.

If they can do that, simply by sitting down in the middle of a busy intersection, naked, unorganized and unrepresentative, what could they achieve if they really got serious?

The NKOBs in the industry have built up their numbers over the past ten years or so, almost unnoticed, and are different from the rest of us.

They have passion and they demand respect.

Moreover, they value the work they do and sense that the public does not. This is a recipe for continued disquiet.

Within the next ten years or so, the WASs and G&Is will gradually retire, and the baton will pass to a new generation of drivers, who, because of the ease by which they can enter the industry, will transform it.

I wish them well. I hope they will find a way to break the stranglehold currently enjoyed by a handful of multiple-licence holders; a stranglehold, that has in 24 years, seen the value of the licence go from $40,000 to $400,000, while the average driver, who is excluded from any equity in this phenomenal increase, works a 60-hour week to scratch out an average annual gross income of $20,000.

As if to add insult to injury, he is deprived of any sick leave or holiday pay and labours under conditions that many of the NKOBs came to Australia to escape. And, oh yes, he may also be stabbed and even murdered for his trouble.

It's not as if the circumstances are any different from 24 years ago.

There have been several murders of drivers in the past, before the NKOBs came, yet I don't recall much more than a whimper of protest or alarm being raised. The best we did was to provide a guard of honour as the hearse drove off to the cemetery.

Recently, I tried to put the case for taxi drivers in a discussion topic on Facebook. I genuinely thought there would be some sympathy for our cause. I was wrong.

The reaction was astonishing.

I never realised that we were held in such contempt by so many people.

And why is that?

Because some driver didn't know where to go, or he was rude, or his car was dirty, or he went the wrong way. Well, hello! Try stacking that up against the driver's experience: passengers who are also rude, abusive, drunken, urinating, defecating, vomiting, and who more frequently these days, run off without paying.

I'm only two years away from the pension now and soon someone else will have to take on the call for reform.

That, I now realise, will only come when the community learns to respect the industry and makes driving a taxi something people find attractive, rather than a job of last resort.